Taxing Our Movie Patience

I love movies. I borrow them from the library or from friends. If I really like a movie, I look through the bin at the Dollar Store, or on the shelves at Goodwill. I have several shelves of slightly scratched or cheap DVDs.

Sometimes I even pay more than a buck to buy a movie or television series, but only if it’s truly great art, or has lots of explosions in it. But after I pay, there’s a second sales tax that comes with it – not a money sales tax, a sales tax of my time.

Back in the days of VHS, I put in my tape, hit play followed by fast forward to get through the leader, advertisements, previews, and that stupid FBI warning that everyone has seen thousands of times and nobody reads.

I can still fast forward, or even skip the previews on a DVD, but a lot of the crap at the front they MAKE me sit through.

I put in the disk and up comes the community standards warning on the first preview. I hit every button I can think of to get past that endless screen. I can press the skip, fast forward or even the menu button, and the stupid DVD doesn’t care. If I want to avoid seeing that tired old message (which I haven't read yet,) or the more tiring FBI message (which I also haven't read,) or the most tiring or all Interpol message

(which I refuse to read because I'm AMERICAN, buddy, and I don't spell it with a K!) I have to leave the room.

How is that right? If I own a DVD, why can’t I skip through that stupid crap? Sometimes even the anti-smoking ads are skip-proof. There’s absolutely no reason for this. It’s not as if some movie bootlegger (or chain-smoker) can stand up in court and claim ignorance of the law (or danger of cancer,) because the skip function worked on their DVD.

Lions gate is the worst. They won’t even let you skip the elaborate hour-long (at least it seems that way,) Lionsgate logo sequence that begins in the inner-workings of a door lock and ends with music so loud that you’ll either be too deaf to hear the movie, or you don’t catch the fist lines of the feature because you turned the sound down low – which means you’ll have to rewind or restart which, of course, leads you back into that stupid lock leading to the ear-crushing crescendo.

Maybe Lions Gate has financial interest in hearing aids.

Disney – a once beautiful visionary producer of family entertainment, now turned evil corporate octopus – gives you a confusing option to skip the 25 minutes of promotional garbage, but only if you can figure out what button to push when they tell you to. I’ve yet to choose the right one because I guess I’m not smart enough to follow their legally acceptable instructions to avoid their marketing blitz.

I bet the average parent of five-year-olds isn’t smart enough either.

And I guess that's the problem. We, the consumer public are collectively too stupid to demand that governments and corporate villains stop taxing our leisure time with their boring, obnoxious, and sometimes phonetically harmful propaganda.

Demand you rights! Tell these time-stealers to enable our FF, skip and menu buttons. Go to it now, fellow consumers!

And while you're doing that, I'll be chuckling manically as I fast-forward my old, but user-friendly VHS tapes.

Take that, time wasters!

Here's the least worst of the YouTube vids on the subject.

Courting Evil

On two previous occasions I’ve made overtures to two great corporations for sponsorship:  Little Debbie and Starbucks. Surprisingly, nothing has come of either proposal. I’m getting tired of eating post-expiration-date bread from the thrift store. (I suspect they’re lying about that “nutrient-rich spinach coating.”) It’s time to make another try.

Yes, I know that I’ve had my issues with Disney, but I just want to let them know that I’m the kind of guy that can get past old disagreements and gain new perspective – you know… be bought.

To show the kind of work I’m prepared to do on their behalf, I’ve written new lyrics to one of the most hated tunes of all time, It’s a Small World After All.

Here’s the tune. I dare you to put it on continuous loop for an hour and not go pee in your neighbor’s coy pond or some other act of suburban terrorism. To spice up the chorus (which is only 6 words – 7 if you count a contraction as 2,) I’ve put in words to be sung subliminally beneath the line, After All. My version is a little more syncopated on the 2^nd, 4^th, and 6^th lines of the verses as well. I mean, c’mon! I can’t leave it like it is.

It’s a Mouse World After All

lyrics by Headley Hauser

music by A. Vicious Sadist

Sure you know Snow White

And the crick-et-that-can-sing

Ariel in shells

Bambi and the-Li-on-King

Just a wish on a star?

No, we-own-much-more-by-far

It’s a mouse world after all

It’s a mouse world

After all (Disney over all)

It’s a mouse world

After all (This globe is just our ball)

It’s a mouse world

After all (To approach us you must crawl)

It’s our own mouse world

 

Eleven theme parks

A-long-with-for-ty-three-re-sorts

Stores in every mall

You look great-in-Don-ald’s-shorts

Disney Cruz on the waves (Snap!)

(Avast ye) Move-those-oars-you-slaves!

It’s a mouse world after all

It’s a mouse world

After all (Goofy sure is tall)

It’s a mouse world

After all (Buy him at the mall)

It’s a mouse world

After all (Check out our princess wall)

It’s our own mouse world

 

E- -S-P-N

Disney Channel, A&E

Disney Med-i-a

Not to-men-tion ABC

Fine-art as well it seems

Put a mouse on Munch's Scream

It’s a mouse world after all

It’s a mouse world

After all (Zippity-do-da-dall)

It’s a mouse world

After all (In black Southern Drawl)

It’s a mouse world

After all (It’s not racist, Y’all)

It’s our own mouse world

Disney Publishing

And yes we own Marvel

Hyper-i-on

Just a start, but ain’t it swell

On Broadway and on Ice

Hey, you better say it’s nice

(‘Cause) it’s a mouse world after all

It’s a mouse world

After All (We will make the call)

It’s a mouse world

After All (Fight us? – you will fall)

It’s a mouse world

After All (Don’t you love our gall?)

It’s our own mouse world

We enslaved Pixar

‘Cause all we write is crap

Absorbed P. Domain

All across the map

Don’t you dare infringe our rights

Yes! Our lawyers love those fights

It’s our mouse world OVER all.

WWWD

Toto in Munchkinland

No doubt evil Disney Corp

 (not to be confused with Sainted Uncle Walt)

will come after me for infringing on the copyright they have purchased from the Frank Baum estate and the makers of the 1939 classic, Wizard of Oz. Why does Disney buy all the classics? It couldn’t be because they lack imagination (without Pixar) to do anything original anymore? Of course those dozen Saved By The Bell rip-offs that constitute the Disney Channels programming are all… something.

Toto in Munchkinland

by Headley Hauser

 

The house never used to move like that. At least Toto didn’t think it moved that way, but he spent all of his time with Dorothy, and she wandered around outside singing a lot, so he couldn’t be sure. This was a lot like being in the basket when the bad dog rode on her bicycle over the rocky hilly road, except that now he didn’t see any way to jump out.

Crash!

Well, there wasn’t till now.

"Oh Toto," said Dorothy, "look at all the colors!"

What was a color? Dorothy was the love of his life, but Toto could never understand this thing she had about colors. Then she completely ignored the most interesting smells.

Dorothy was a very strange dog.

What was this? Toto ran out of the house and around to the side. There was something under the house – something either newly dead or just dying. It was the foulest, nastiest smell he’d ever smelled in his life. Was it food? Maybe he should roll in it.

He’d better check with Dorothy.

"Dorothy!" Toto barked, "you gotta come smell this dead thing!"

"Toto," said Dorothy, "I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore."

Talk about changing the subject! Sometimes it seemed like Dorothy just wasn’t listening.

Dorothy went around looking at flowers while Toto sniffed for really interesting things. Of course, the dead thing was pretty hard to ignore, but Toto wasn’t a puppy anymore. He knew how to sniff for little things. There weren’t many things to smell, no rabbits or squirrels or even those bag things with all the hard kibble in them. Unless that dead thing was food, they might be in trouble.

But there were dogs – lots of them. They smelled different than Dorothy, but so did Toto. Dogs came in all kinds of scents. Dorothy was so busy looking for colors that she didn’t even smell the pack.

Toto wasn’t worried. The pack smelled like they were afraid. Toto gave a growl to show them that they had reason to fear. Three dogs smaller than Dorothy and a big bitch with white fur came out of the weeds so Dorothy could see them. Toto prepared for a fight.

They just talked. They didn’t even growl, but at least they showed Dorothy respect.

The pack showed Dorothy the dead thing under the house. They didn’t say it was food, so Toto lost interest and went around marking the small trees that didn’t smell like real trees at all.

It was too easy. No dogs had marked any of them.

"What’s wrong with you dogs!" Toto barked.

Dorothy giggled like Toto had made a joke and held out her arms. Toto jumped into her arms. She never understood the things he tried to tell her, but she was nice and warm.

They talked some more – not about food or territory or anything useful. They talked about witches and a wizard. Unless they were the witches and wizard of food, Toto didn’t care.

Then it got weird.

Everybody started saying, "Follow the yellow brick road." They said it over and over again. Even Dorothy said it. Dorothy started walking while saying, "Follow the yellow brick road." She motioned for Toto to follow her.

Toto followed. He always followed Dorothy. He loved Dorothy.

"But when do we eat?" barked Toto.

"And what’s yellow?"

Some people don’t get that last line. Dogs are colorblind, so…

Never mind – Hey Disney, here’s a new logo for you!